Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/239

Rh Leont'ev is disturbed because Byzantine Russia has annexed Catholic Poland, and the unrussian and unbyzantine frontier lands are a continual worry to him. Russia's mission, as suggested by the slavophils, the unification of the Slavs, seems to Leont'ev a momentous and difficult task.

We may recall what Tsar Nicholas thought of panslavism, and we may recall that Nicholas practised the Austrian policy of Leont'ev in the days before Leont'ev.

For the nonce, Russia, said Leont'ev, was to be guided by the old maxim "divide et impera," above all in her Balkan policy. The political fragmentation of the Balkans was an advantage, and Russia's only aim should be to secure religious unification; the parliaments of the Balkan states were disastrous. The southern Slav bourgeoisie had already been infected by European liberalism, and nothing but the Turkish suzerainty had saved the Balkan states from annihilation by European liberalism. The Russian, said Leont'ev, has little in common with the other Slavs; by nature he is more akin to Asiatics, to the Turks and to the Tatars, than to the southern and western Slavs; he is lazier, more fatalistic, more obedient to authority, more good-natured, more regardless of consequences, braver, more inconsistent, and much more inclined to religious mysticism, than are the Serbs, the Bulgars, the Czechs, and the Croats. In his stories of Balkan life, Leont'ev showed much sympathy with the Turkish character, and a profound understanding of its qualities both good and evil.

Leont'ev agrees with the narodniki and the slavophils in the view that Russia possesses in the mir an institution which is worthy to be incorporated into Byzantinism.

Leont'ev approves for Russia the annexation of Asiatic lands, as yet uncontaminated by Europeanism. He is unaffrighted by differences in race, language, and even religion, because, as we have learned, he considers that these maintain the life of society, are that life, and because at the same time they facilitate autocracy.

As regards the Balkan peninsula, Leont'ev desired above all, like the slavophils and Dostoevskii, to occupy Constantinople, not on nationalist grounds, but in order to revive the eastern empire of Rome. He was so consistent in his Byzantinism that in the religious dispute between the Bulgars and the Greeks he espoused the Greek cause. As an absolutist, he consistently advocated aristocracy and condemned liberal